Sunday, August 21, 2016

End
Appeasement of Iran, But Don’t Pull the Trigger (Yet)

Professor Daniel M. Zucker,

International Analyst Nework, 10 January 2010

Two articles in the Israeli
press last week indicate that a growing number of Israeli political
commentators believe that we have arrived at a point where engaging Iran
diplomatically will only serve to allow the Mullahs to acquire nuclear weaponry
which is seen as an existential threat to the Jewish state. Both Michael
Kolker, writing at Israel Insider (“Only Force Will Stop Iran”, Israel
Insider.com, January 1, 2010, http://israelinsider.ning.com/forum/topics/michael-kolker-only-force-will
), and Michael Freund at Arutz Sheva‘ (“Is it time to bomb Iran?”,
Israel National News.com, December 31, 2009, http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Blogs/Message.aspx/4009
) suggest that it is time to bomb Iran as nothing else will stop the current
Iranian leadership from its drive to obtain atomic weaponry. President Barack
H. Obama’s attempt to use diplomacy clearly has failed to stop the Islamic
Republic of Iran’s nuclear program, and Iran’s counter proposal of last week
should make even the most ostrich-like Western diplomats realize that their
moment on stage in this drama has passed and a new scene is about to unfold.

Like Kolker and Freund, I
believe that diplomacy is worthless in this situation; the Islamic Republic is
only bargaining for time. I said such half a decade ago, and I say so now with
even greater conviction. However, unlike my learned colleagues, I don’t dismiss
sanctions and an embargo of Iran as useless. I do agree that neither embargoes
nor sanctions will cause the current government to rethink the value of their
nuclear pursuits because the Khamenei regime needs those weapons to maintain
its hold on the reins of power. To Ali Khamenei and his puppet president,
Mahmoud Ahamdinejad, the nuclear weaponry program is like a transfusion for one
dying of internal bleeding-it’s their only chance for survival. So Kolker and
Freund are correct that Iran will not relent in its quest for the bomb.
However, tough sanctions and embargoes can have another important effect on the
situation.

Most opponents of sanctions and
embargoes reject these economic weapons as punishing the wrong people. It is
frequently said that only the poor will suffer from such economic warfare. In
the case of Iran-now in the midst of societal upheavals and a middle and upper
class revolt for the past half year due to the fraudulent elections of June
2009 and the regime’s repression of all protest to that fraud-it is the lower
classes that hold the key to the future. If the lower classes turn against the
Islamic Republic, Khomeinism will be relegated to the dustbin of history. For
thirty years the regime has subsidized the poor; now, however, budget deficits
due to falling oil prices have required that these subsidies be curtailed and
possibly ended to the rising consternation of the lower classes, already
suffering under an inflation rate pegged anywhere between 15% and 28%. If we
can apply tough sanctions and embargoes-all oil products, indeed all
non-medical supplies-an action which to date has not been applied, the level of
discontent will rise dramatically higher. Given that situation, the Iranian
people are very capable of rising up and replacing the regime in a revolution.

Already there are reports of
members of the Pasdaran (the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps) and the
Bassij (the theological militia) turning against the regime-removing
their uniforms, surrendering their arms, and joining the demonstrators.
Iranians have made their disgust with the regime abundantly clear, as well as
their extreme distaste for the likes of Hizballah, Hamas, and Jihad
Islami. The parallels between the current situation and when the shah fell
thirty-one years ago are strikingly similar and becoming more so every day.

There is one other event that
may occur to allow the Iranian people to throw off the yoke of Islamist
religious tyranny that has suffocated Iran for three decades. This week the
U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear the petition of the oldest and
best organized Iranian Opposition group-the People’s Mojahedin
Organization of Iran-to be removed from the State Department’s list of Foreign
Terrorist Organizations. The PMOI was placed on the FTO thirteen years by the
diplomatic engagement-seeking Clinton-Albright State Department at the behest
of the Mullahs of Tehran. A favorable outcome is expected since the PMOI won
similar cases in the United Kingdom in 2008 and the European
Union in 2009, based on the presentation of open and classified
information. If the PMOI is once again vindicated, this victory will provide
the Iranian people with the oxygen needed for the sparks of freedom to ignite.
Whether the Iranian people choose to be led by the PMOI or another group is
their business; after living in the hell of a Khomeinist regime, it’s their
right to choose what type of secular democratic government they want. If the
Khomeinists are thrown out, any Iranian government will be an improvement, and
the need to exercise the military option will be obviated.

Rabbi Daniel M. Zucker is
founder and Chairman of the Board of Americans for Democracy in the
Middle-East, a grassroots organization dedicated to teaching our elected officials
and the public of the dangers posed by Islamic fundamentalism and the need to
establish genuine democratic institutions in the Middle-East that promote the
dignity of the individual as an antidote to the venom of fundamentalism. He may
be contacted at contact@ADME.ws.

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About Me

Rabbi Dr. Daniel M. Zucker founded Americans for Democracy in the Middle-East in 2005, an organization dedicated to teaching the public and our elected officials about the dangers of Islamic radical fundamentalism and the need to develop genuine democratic institutions in the region. Rabbi Zucker has organized and led briefings at the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate., and has spoken at human rights conferences at the United Nations, and delivered speeches at the 2005 National Conference for a Democratic, Secular Iran, at the 2006 Iranian National Convention in Washington, DC., and at the 2005 and 2006 Maryam Rajavi Iranian Freedom Convocations in Paris.
Rabbi Zucker is the author of over one hundred articles on the Middle-East.